Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young says Zoo magazine made her look incompetent and immature when it superimposed a photograph of her head on to the body of a lingerie-clad model.

Hanson-Young is suing the magazine on several grounds over the picture and article entitled "Zoo's asylum seeker bikini plan", published in July 2012, a week after her emotional address in the Senate about Australia's humanitarian intake of asylum seekers.

But New South Wales supreme court justice Lucy McCallum on Wednesday struck out several of her arguments, saying she did not believe the picture made the senator look incompetent or immature.

McCallum, however, granted Hanson-Young leave to argue her case in front of a jury at a later date.

The magazine had said it would "house the next boatload of asylum seekers in the Zoo office", if the Greens' immigration spokeswoman would agree to a "tasteful" bikini or lingerie photo-shoot.

Hanson-Young says the magazine gave rise to several imputations, including that she is "not a politician to be taken seriously" and that her pro-asylum seeker stance is "ridiculous".

The senator also claims the article suggested she was not competent to make a serious contribution to the political debate on asylum seekers because she is "too emotional" and "too immature".

Bauer Media, which owns Zoo magazine, said the article was plainly intended as a joke and only a "strained, forced or unnatural reading" of it would cause a reader not to take Hanson-Young seriously.

McCallum found there was no imputation that Hanson-Young was immature and emotional.

"I do not have any difficulty accepting that the article is denigrating and capable of holding [Hanson-Young] up to public ridicule," Justice McCallum said.

"However, I do not think it is capable of attributing incompetence or immaturity to her."